Pagans and Gags

Nazi pagans rejoiced last week as Professor Wilhelm Hauer, founder of the 100% Germanic Faith Movement, performed its first wedding in Berlin without benefit of other clergy.

"I shall act as the Weihewart or Consecrator of this wedding," declared Professor Hauer, and proceeded to do so. While the bride and groom bent their heads and cameras clicked, the Weihewart read sonorously from a ritual book of Pagan devising: "Oh Mother Earth, from whom all love proceeds! And oh Father Heaven, who blesses with His light and weather! And all good Powers of the Air! May you rule over this man and this woman until their destinies are fulfilled!"

Same day in Vatican City the Osservatore Romano, official newsorgan of the Holy See, declared that the recent "blood purge" and "unheard of cruelties" of Adolf Hitler were the direct result of Nazi pagan teaching. "It is incredible and shocking that final religious solace was denied to the men doomed," declared Osservatore. "A drop of liquor and a cigaret were not refused, yet Christ was denied to these unfortunate Germans. How sad their agony must have been. It is unheard of and terrifying to refuse to souls their supreme comfort: God's forgiveness. For the essence of Christianity is the quest of God's forgiveness."

Meanwhile German Protestants were gagged last week by Minister of Interior Dr. Wilhelm Frick. In an effort to force all groups under a new German Protestant Constitution to be drawn up by Dr. Ludwig Mueller, a onetime Army chaplain who was made Reichsbischof by Chancellor Hitler (TIME, July 10, 1933), Dr. Frick decreed that there shall be "no discussion of church policies" in public assemblies of three or more persons or by printed or written words. Only the Reichsbischof did Dr. Frick except from this gag, and to him all other Protestants were supposed to listen in obedient silence.

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